In 2014, European Union countries hosted a relatively small share of refugees. At the end of 2014, the world’s top refugee host was Turkey followed by Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia and Jordan. Lebanon hosted by far the largest number of refugees by population. By the first six months of 2015, 137,000 refugees and migrants arrived in Europe by sea under profoundly difficult and unsafe conditions as compared to the 75,000 that arrived during the same time period last year. The numbers are expected to continue to rise throughout the rest of 2015.

Syrian refugees make up the single largest group followed by refugees from Eritrea and Afghanistan. High numbers of refugees from Somalia, Iraq and Sudan who are in need of international protection are also arriving in Europe. According to UNHCR, the majority of those arriving in Europe in the first six months of 2015 were men searching for a safe place to live and work before attempting to reunite later with their families. However, this total also included large numbers of women and children, including thousands of unaccompanied and separated children.

Often the lack of legal routes to safety leaves no choice for many men, women and children other than to turn to smugglers at enormous cost and danger to their lives. Before arriving in Europe, many have suffered high levels of abuse, exploitation and human rights violations.

In countries around the globe, Salesian missionaries are assisting close to 400,000 refugees and internally displaced persons whose lives have been affected by war, persecution, famine and natural disasters such as floods, droughts and earthquakes. Salesian programs provide refugees much needed education and technical skills training, workforce development, healthcare and nutrition.

Salesian missionaries are working across Europe helping to provide needed services for the new wave of refugees arriving in these countries.

ITALY

In Sicily, Salesian missionaries have revamped a reception center for children who come to Italy looking for a better life. The reception center provides the first emergency point of contact for unaccompanied migrant and refugee minors. By creating two new sections within the existing center, missionaries have been able to add an extra bedroom and bathroom as well as a new bathroom for staff. The center also includes a living room and balcony that serves as a communal area to encourage sharing and relaxation.

All the fittings and interior doors of the premises have been replaced and new furniture has been acquired including a television set, DVD player, computer, cookware and plates. Currently, the house can accommodate up to 12 youth. The center offers an immediate welcome and safe space and is prepared to offer accommodation for as long as necessary until youth find a suitable, more permanent solution. The new structure also offers educational initiatives including language skills training and legal assistance to help youth begin a new life in Italy.

In addition to the center in Sicily, the Salesians of the Special Circumscription of Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta are active in welcoming refugees to their new reception center at the Don Bosco Institute in Alessandria, a city in Piedmont, Italy, and the capital of the Province of Alessandria. And in Turin, Italy, Salesian missionaries are working with the local government to actively plan a new center for refugees while assessing what assistance might be needed to help unaccompanied youth long-term.

GERMANY

The German Province of the Salesians of Don Bosco has been strengthening its commitment to young refugees. To meet the large and growing need in Germany in recent weeks, Salesian missionaries have been continually increasing the number of houses where they give assistance to youth in need.

In addition to new houses, missionaries are now offering temporary housing. Today, 11 Salesian programs across Germany are caring for 448 refugee youth and more accommodations are being prepared to accept additional refugees as the need increases. Most of the refugees are young males between 16 and 18 years of age who have come to Germany from African countries, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The boys are provided shelter in Salesian houses that can accommodate up to 12 people with four social workers available 24 hours a day.

SPAIN

In Madrid, Salesian missionaries are developing programs across the country in preparation for additional refugees seeking services. Missionaries are working with local governments and other social programs to respond to the refugee crisis.

Salesian missionaries who have previous experience working with young refugees and their families are helping to start additional Salesian programs that will address the needs of today’s refugee youth. Many of the new programs focus on meeting the immediate needs of newly-arrived refugees and go on to address the need for education and employment. Missionaries are also working with local schools to help assimilate children from refugee families into classrooms.

Salesian Sisters with the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians are working with the local government and diocese in Madrid to determine the most appropriate course of action to respond to and assist refugees from Syria. Currently, the Salesian Sisters operate six socio-educational projects that offer services for children at risk of social exclusion (many of them immigrants) and a social work project that was created to provide education and workforce development services to help decrease youth unemployment and educational inequality for those in poverty, especially girls.

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Sources:

ANS – Italy Reception Centre for unaccompanied minors

ANS – Germany Welcoming Refugees: Salesians of Don Bosco in Germany give increased aid

ANS – Spain Welcoming Refugees: the Salesians in Spain are ready

UNHCR – The sea route to Europe: The Mediterranean passage in the age of refugees

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Sharing a 500-mile-long border with Syria, southeastern Turkey has more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees, as reported by the United Nations. Salesian missionaries are providing services at three sites within Syria while also providing for Syrian refugees in Turkey. While many Syrian refugees stay in towns on the Turkey-Syrian border, many find their way to big cities like Istanbul where Salesian missionaries operate a program that currently serves close to 400 Syrian refugees.

The Don Bosco Center opened its doors 20 years ago as a temporary response to a wave of refugees from Iraq. With conflict continuing in the region today, new refugees and asylum seekers arrive every day. Currently, there are 350 children enrolled in the center, mostly from Iraq and Syria, who are being taught English as well as other traditional school subjects such as mathematics, geography and music. Students have access to sports and dance programs intended to help them connect with their peers and find enjoyment and comfort in their new surroundings. In addition, the program provides counseling both for youth and their families to help them overcome the challenges and traumas they may have faced.

“Salesian missionary work in Istanbul serves a critical purpose providing refugees links to service providers and comprehensive assistance as they transition, for an unknown period of time, into local society,” says Neill Holland, program officer at the Salesian Missions Office for International Programs. “Without a doubt, the biggest Salesian success is the safe space created for youth who have experienced trauma in their home countries. At the Don Bosco School and community center, refugee youth take part in recreation activities with Turkish youth which allows them to move beyond their hardships while giving them a chance to forget their worries and be children once again.”

Basima Toma, one of the center’s teachers, provides English language lessons to approximately 40 students. Toma, her husband and their four children are adherents of the Chaldean Catholic religion and lived in Baghdad, Iraq, until a Christian-owned business near them was attacked and destroyed, leaving them concerned for their safety. In 2013, the family moved to Turkey where they have found a renewed sense of security.

“Now I do not fear for my children,” said Toma, in a recent Catholic News Service article about the Don Bosco Center. “I put my head on my pillow and am not afraid when they are not with me.”

Like Toma, most of the teachers at the center are refugees or asylum seekers. Father Andres Calleja Ruiz reports that students relate better to and feel more comfortable with teachers that have gone through some of the same experiences and understand the suffering they may have endured. The teachers also speak Arabic, the native language of most of the refugee students, which is helpful in the classroom.

“Here we do not ask anyone what religion they are or to what political movement they belong,” says Fr. Calleja.

In addition to educating refugees, the center provides a safe space where they can sing and play. Many young refugees had never been to school or attended only sporadically because of war in their countries. Salesian missionaries at the center work to provide youth a sense of regularity and opportunities to catch up on their missed school years and childhoods. For one student, Sarah Mohammed, the Don Bosco Center is the only place where she and her sister are able to gain an education and learn both English and Turkish. The sisters and their family were forced to flee from Aleppo, Syria more than a year ago after an explosion near the girls’ school.

An estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war in March 2011, taking refuge in neighboring countries or within Syria itself. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 3 million have fled to Syria’s immediate neighbors Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Another 6.5 million are internally displaced within Syria. Refugee camps in these bordering countries are overflowing with families in need of basic supplies, adequate shelter and safety as well as technical skills training so they can begin to earn a living in their new host countries.

Recently, close to 150,000 Syrians have declared asylum in the European Union, while member states have pledged to resettle a further 33,000 Syrians. The vast majority of these resettlement locations, 28,500 or 85 percent, have been pledged by Germany.

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Sources:

ANS – Turkey – Studying, singing and playing, after fleeing their homes due to war

CNS – Salesian center offers haven for Iraqi, Syrian children in Istanbul

UNHCR – 2015 UNHCR country operations profile – Turkey

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Youth at risk of poverty or social exclusion are typically found in single parent families, large families and immigrant and ethnic minority families. With almost 10 percent unemployment, often spanning generations, youth with unemployed or underemployed parents also face a higher risk of poverty.

In addition, almost 15 percent of youth leave school without achieving a secondary education.

These conditions give rise to a staggering youth unemployment rate which is about twice the average when compared to the general population. Almost one fourth of youth are unemployed and face daily struggles to find employment and earn a livable wage.

To combat these challenges, the Salesians held a seven day training course called, “Transforming Voluntarism into Social Entrepreneurship” in early April at the Salesian Youth Center in Sliema, Malta. The course was funded by the European Commission and utilized project management within “Youth in Action” programs as a tool for developing entrepreneurial competence.

Designed and organized by Don Bosco Youth Net, the training program aims to motivate young volunteers to take the initiative to develop solutions for problems faced by young people across the European Union today.

“Salesians are working across the European Union to help youth find their own path out of poverty,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco. “Youth need the tools, the education and support to help them on a path to a productive life. Courses like this help propel youth in the right direction, encouraging them to take responsibility for their lives and their futures.”

Twenty youth representing Austria, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Spain, Malta, the UK, Czech Republic and Italy took part in the training course. Learning the differences between voluntarism, social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship through role playing, presentations and active work, the students learned how to turn ideas and concepts into action.

Each session combined elements of theoretical and practical work and challenged youth to utilize both personal and team skills to develop their abilities to plan and manage projects in order to achieve social objectives. Youth were challenged to design an innovative product to fit the needs of people in modern times.

Ideas ranged from arranging a festival to building a hostel. The students learned how to create a project based on ideas that had been collected. Then they explored how to finance their project and apply for funding from the European Union. Students received feedback from experts and their peers as they discussed their ideas for implementation.

“Sometimes jobs just aren’t available for youth”, adds Fr. Hyde. “The program’s overall focus on social entrepreneurship helps youth create their own opportunities in their local communities.”

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Sources:

ANS – Malta – Young Volunteers become Social Entrepreneurs to Fight Youth Unemployment

UNICEF – Tens of millions of children living in poverty in the world’s richest countries

The post MALTA: Learning Social Entrepreneurship to Combat Youth Unemployment first appeared on MissionNewswire.

“The rise of the South is unprecedented in its speed and scale,” says the Human Development Report 2013, which uses the term “South” to mean developing countries and “North” to mean developed nations. “Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast.”

Meanwhile, the slowdown in economic growth, austerity measures and rampant unemployment in the industrialized world has brought pressure to bear on governments and societies in the North. Global economic and political structures are in flux and the sustainability of the growth spurt in the South is subject to the interrelated issues of governance and public investment.

The year’s report, entitled The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, emphasizes that this change represents a global rebalancing far greater than that experienced during the Industrial Revolution, with the South becoming the main driver of economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries.

“The Industrial Revolution was a story of perhaps 100 million people, but this is a story about billions of people,” said Khalid Malik, the report’s lead author.

The Human Development Report, released annually by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), assesses the state of human development on the basis of health, education and income indicators, as an alternative to purely macroeconomic assessments of national progress.

The initial report was published in 1990 by its authors, the late Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen, and introduced a Human Development Index (HDI), which had been calculated by UN economists from 1975, and was essentially a ranking of countries based on strides made with a people-centric model of progress.

The HDI became an influential paradigm that would prod economists, government agencies, planners and development experts to rethink the income-based indicators that were in standard use to measure development success.

Launched today in Mexico City by UNDP Administrator Helen Clark and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, this year’s report singles out big economies which have shown significant growth over the past 20 years, namely China, India and Brazil. It estimates that by 2020, the combined output of these three countries will surpass the aggregate production of the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada.

However, the ‘rise of the South’ goes well beyond these economies as more than 40 developing countries have made greater human development gains in recent decades than what was predicted.

Countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Yemen all registered significant growth, while nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan had some of the fastest growth rates in the world with 3.9 percent and 1.7 percent over the past 12 years, respectively.

How has the South achieved such dramatic growth levels?

The report attributes many of the achievements of the South to smart national strategies that have allowed them to engage in the global economy while at the same time implementing social programmes that protect those most vulnerable.

“Economic growth alone does not automatically translate into human development progress,” Miss Clark says in the report’s foreword. Southern States are therefore not just tapping into global trade, but they are also improving health and education services, which have allowed them to sustain their growth. This comes in contrast to policies adopted by many developed countries which include austerity measures and cutting social programmes due to the economic crisis.

In Latin America, many countries have put in place programmes to eradicate poverty and address inequality such as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Mexico’s Oportunidades, and Chile’s Chile Solidario. These are conditional cash transfer programmes which offer to increase people’s income as long as they fulfil certain conditions such as visits to health clinics and school attendance.

This combination of policies has allowed the middle class in the South to expand and, by 2030, the report projects that more than 80 percent of the world’s middle class will reside in developing countries and account for 70 percent of total consumption expenditure.

Increasing online and mobile connectivity in the South

Increasing connectivity thanks to greater access to technology is also a factor that has contributed to the South’s growth. Globally, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico have more daily social media traffic than any country except the US. China also has more than half a billion people accessing the Internet daily through smart phones.

Indonesia, for example, invested extensively to connect its large cluster of far-flung islands to open the country to the outside world, and as of 2010, 220 million mobile phones were registered in a country of 240 million people.

In Africa, Asian-built mobile phones have made cellular banking cheaper and easier, while leading to better market performance and increased profits by small farmers, as seen in Kenya, Niger and Uganda.

Increasing incomes and the diffusion of technology have also given way to a more informed middle class that has social and political expectations, Mr. Malik said in a press briefing on Tuesday, which means that “the relationship between the State and its citizens is changing.”

He warned that if States are not mindful of these expectations, it could lead to social instability, as was the case in 2011 in various countries across the Middle East.

“The turmoil in several countries in the Arab States is a reminder that people, especially the young, who are better educated and healthier than previous generations, put a high premium on meaningful employment, on exercising a voice in affairs that influence their lives, and on being treated with respect,” the report says.

Booming South-South partnerships

The report highlights the increase in South-South trade and partnerships and projects that trade between them will overtake that between developed nations.

“Emerging partners in the developing world are already sources of innovative social and economic policies and are major trade, investment and increasingly development cooperation partners for other developing countries,” Miss Clark said.

China is already influential in Africa through trade investment as well as through assistance and cooperation. Between 1992 and 2011, China’s trade with Sub-Saharan Africa rose from $1 billion to more than $140 billion.

India is increasingly playing a larger role as a supplier of affordable capital goods to other countries of the South. For instance, Indian firms are supplying affordable medicines, medical equipment and information and communications technology (ICT) products and services to many countries in Africa.

In addition, migration between developing countries has recently surpassed net migration from South to North. “In our changing world, solutions are moving across the South, not from the North to the South,” said UNDP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Ajay Chhibber.

However, a substantial share of South-South trade is driven by demand in the North. For example, since 2007, US exports to China and Latin America and the Caribbean have grown two and a half times faster than US exports to traditional markets in the North. A growing “app economy” supported by companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google employs more than 300,000 people whose creations are exported across borders, and developing country economies continue to be sensitive to shocks in the industrialized world.

Women’s education as a silver bullet for sustainable growth

While there has been remarkable progress, the report warns that there are still many challenges ahead for countries in the South, including an aging population, environmental degradation and inequality. Poverty and inequality are particularly worrying, as an estimated 1.57 billion people, representing 30 percent of the population in the 104 countries studied for the report, still live in multidimensional poverty.

The report provides a series of recommendations and, in particular, highlights education for girls as “the closest thing to silver bullet formula for accelerating human development.”

Many of the countries in the South still have dramatic gender disparities, and their challenge will be to boost efforts to allow women to participate freely in all aspects of their society.

“Gender inequality is especially tragic not only because it excludes women from basic social opportunities, but also because it gravely imperils the life prospects of future generations,” the report says, referring to findings which correlate women’s education to greater child survival, healthier children and better access to contraception.

The report also notes that the global system will need to adjust itself to the rise of the South, which is currently largely underrepresented in global institutions. For example, China, which is the world’s second largest economy, has had a smaller voting share in the World Bank than either France or the United Kingdom.

“Stronger voices from the South are demanding more representative frameworks of international governance that embody the principles of democracy and equity.”

Meanwhile, it merits mention that not all countries in the South are racing ahead. Of the world’s 49 Least Developed Countries, many are lagging behind in this revolution. Even as some are beginning to benefit from Foreign Direct Investment of the emerging giants like China, India and Brazil, there is much more to be done in terms of development transformation.

The report observes that there are three drivers of transformation: a proactive development state, tapping of global markets and determined social policy inclusion. Looking back at the inception of the HDI, it appears that countries that started at the same level – India and Pakistan, or Chile and Venezuela, or Liberia and Senegal – have ended up with different outcomes.

“History and initial conditions matter, but they are not destiny,” according to the report.

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See this United Nations article at its original location >

Rice fields in Sichuan, China. UN Photo/John Isaac

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